East meets west, North forgets South
Vanessa Baird explains why the end of the Cold War could cost the Third World dear.

A tale of two cities
Kabul and Peshawar. Behrouz Afagh shuttles between the opposing camps in Afghanistan's devastating civil war.

Action replay
A fast rewind through a year's events that have changed the shape of the world.

Black in the USSR
The end of Stalinism has opened a can of racist worms in the former Soviet bloc, according to Tajudeen Abdul Raheem.

VIEWPOINT: RACE

Disobedient domino
Mandy Macdonald asks whether Castro and Cuba can withstand the anti-communist tide.

VIEWPOINT: ENEMIES

EAST AND SOUTH - THE FACTS

The human factor
Only the best-behaved African countries, will now get aid. But Rakiya Omaar and Richard Carver question the criteria.

VIEWPOINT: AID

Perishtroika, mon amour
Kishu Singh and Dilip Bobb argue that peace in the North could mean war in the South.

VIEWPOINT: ARMS

The Dollar Quadrille
An iron-curtain raising song with apologies to Lewis Carroll.

Simply.Sparks from Eastern Europe - where will they fall

The Dalai Lama and the Playwright
Tibet has suffered a clampdown in the last year - but found new friends in Eastern Europe. Catriona Bass reports.

VIEWPOINT: ALLIES

'THE characters are stereotypes...'

'Yes.?'

'Could you make them a bit more real? Easier to identify with? What about using photos of Germans celebrating the Berlin Wall coming down?'

The telephone conversation was with Hector Cattolica, the Paris-based Argentinian illustrator who designed this NI front cover. The subject: the 'rough' designs he had sent.

He thought about my comments, then sent his reply. It took the form of a three-page long fax. I recognize that the characters I used are, in a sense, stereotypes, he argued. 'But they are also archetypes which, as Jung would say, correspond to the great themes of the collective unconscious. In this case: wealth.'

He continued: The image is not an illustration of what happened in Berlin last year but a reflection in symbolic form of the consequences of the uniting of the North, seen by me. a man of the South. It might not be seen that way by you...

Not much you could say to that. Except send back a fax saying 'OK, you win,' or words to that effect, and ponder a while upon the wonders of modem communications technology. Here we were, designer and editor, working in different countries yet able to engage in that delicate negotiation between image-maker and word-monger, between the symbolic and the literal, between the perceptions of the Southerner and those of the Northerner, almost as though we were leaning over the same drawing board.

Those involved in Eastern Europe's revolutions have also had cause to appreciate communications technology. The hectic pace of those events was made possible by the fact that Eastern Europeans could get up-to-the-minute news about what was happening in their own and neighbouring countries by picking up Western TV or radio broadcasts.

It is not therefore surprising that Western media moguls are looking to corner the market in the East. The control of such power to influence in the hands of a few Western media networks is worrying. It underlines the responsibility that independent publishers have to provide a viewpoint that is radically different. This issue of NI tries to do this - by looking at how the raising of the Iron Curtain affects people in the Third World.

During the course of my research I became aware that the people I was being referred to - those who were prepared to speculate on global matters and those who presented themselves as possible writers were almost exclusively white and male. This is to be expected. The powerful and the privileged feel at ease with discussing 'the world'. It is, after all, their domain. But I opted deliberately to chart another course, with the result that this magazine is written almost entirely by writers from the South and by women writers. Had this policy had an impact on the content and feel of the magazine? Maybe. But certainly not as much as I had hoped.

The fact remains that whatever your perspective, if you write about the people who shape world events you are inevitably focussing on an elite group of white men. This is the world in which we live.and it will take a hell of a lot more than editorial strategies to change it.

Letters
Letter from La Paz
Update
Endpiece by Helena Paul
Reviews: including Barry Hines classic
Country profile: Bangladesh

FRONT COVER ILLUSTRATION: Hector Cattolica
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